Comparative Essay:
The Hitch-Hiker and Samphire
The two short stories of "Samphire" and "The Hitch-Hiker" can be considered as two very different stories, however some similarities can still be found between them. The story of "Samphire", written by Patrick O'Brian, is a story about a woman named Mollie who, as made obvious in the story, simply despises her husband named Lacey, a strange little man who doens't show much real care for his wife. Appearing to be a conventional married couple on holiday by the sea, as the story progresses, the emptiness of their relationship becomes visible, and Mollie's unhappiness leads to her desperate attempt to kill her husband, which doesn't go through as planned. Roald Dahl's "The Hitch-Hiker" is a comedic and suprising story about a man who picks up an unusual hitch-hiker. The strange hitch-hiker eventually gets the driver into trouble with the authorities, but as unexpected events take place, the drivers view of the strange hitch-hiker changes.
A good way to compare stories is to first look at the main characters, or the protagonists and antagonists. For the first story of "Samphire", it is obvious that Mollie's husband Lacey is the antagonist of the story, atleast that is how the author describes him to us; the author makes it quite clear to the reader that everything Lacey does annoys Mollie, that he is weak and does not really care for Mollie. It is noticeable that Mollie does not say one word to her husband throughout the whole story, more evidence that her husband is simply to self-involved to even notice her silence. It is evident that Lacey is even slightly abusive in their relationship: "Lacey was her lord and master, wasn't he? Love, honour, and obey? He put his arm round her when they came to a sheltered turn of the path and began to fondle her, whispering in his secret night-voice, Tss-ts-tss, but he dropped her at once when some coast-gaurds appeared". Mollie attempts to murder her husband, almost appearing as the heroin of the story at this point due to the reader's hate for her husband, essentially making her the protagonist of the story. For the story of "The Hitch-Hiker", identifying the protagonist and antagonist becomes a little more complicated. In the beginning of the story, we percieve the driver, essentially Roald Dahl as the story is in the 1st person, as the protagonist and the hitch-hiker that he picks up, named Michael Fish, as the antagonist. Roald Dahl describes the hitch hiker similarly to a rat so that it makes the reader assume that the hitch hiker is probably a murderer or some other sort of criminal; once the reader assumes that, it will make them predict that something bad or interesting will happen involving the narrator and hitch-hiker. However as the story progresses, we see that the hitch-hiker may have been wrongly labelled, helping the driver out of a speeding ticket and changing the antagonist to the police officer that pulls them over for speeding. In these ways, the two stories are quite different in terms of protagonists and antagonists.
